Women in Syria are active participants in social, economic and political factions of Syrian society. They constitute 49.9% of Syria's population. According to World Bank data from 2021, there are around 10.6 million women in Syria. However, Syrian women and girls still experience challenges, especially since the outbreak of the civil war in 2011. They suffer from discrimination, lack of access to suitable healthcare and challenges precipitated by wartime violence.
Jamie Bulloch is a British historian and translator of German literature, with over fifty published titles to his name, and twice winner of the Schlegel-Tieck prize.
Vian Dakhil is a current member of the Iraqi parliament. She is the only Kurdish woman who's religion is Yazidism in the Iraqi Parliament.
The Islamic State (IS) has employed sexual violence against women and men in a terroristic manner. Sexual violence, as defined by The World Health Organization includes “any sexual act, attempt to obtain a sexual act, unwanted sexual comments or advances, or acts to traffic, or otherwise directed, against a person’s sexuality using coercion, by any person regardless of their relationship to the victim, in any setting, including but not limited to home and work.” IS has used sexual violence to undermine a sense of security within communities, and to raise funds through the sale of captives into sexual slavery.
Quasi-state-level jihadist groups, including Boko Haram and the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant, have captured and enslaved women and children, often for sexual slavery. In 2014 in particular, both groups organised mass kidnappings of large numbers of girls and younger women.
The condition of human rights in the territory controlled by the Islamic State (IS) is considered to be among the worst in the world. The Islamic State's policies included acts of genocide, torture and slavery. The United Nations Commission on Human Rights (UNCHR) stated in November 2014 that the Islamic State "seeks to subjugate civilians under its control and dominate every aspect of their lives through terror, indoctrination, and the provision of services to those who obey". Many Islamic State actions of extreme criminality, terror, recruitment and other activities have been documented in the Middle East.
The Geneva Summit for Human Rights and Democracy is an annual human rights summit sponsored by a coalition of 20 non-governmental organizations. Each year, on the eve of the United Nations Human Rights Council's main annual session, activists from around the world meet to raise international awareness of human rights situations.
Nadia Murad Basee Taha is an Iraqi-born Yazidi human rights activist based in Germany. In 2014, during the Yazidi genocide by the Islamic State, she was abducted from her hometown of Kocho in Iraq. Much of her community was massacred. After losing most of her family, Murad was held as an Islamic State sex slave for three months, alongside thousands of other Yazidi women and girls.
The Yazidi genocide was perpetrated by the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria between 2014 and 2017. It was characterized by massacres, genocidal rape, and forced conversions to Islam. The Yazidis are a Kurdish-speaking people who are indigenous to Kurdistan who practice Yazidism, a monotheistic Iranian ethnoreligion derived from the Indo-Iranian tradition.
Yazda: Global Yazidi Organization, is a United States-based global Yazidi nonprofit, non-governmental organization (NGO) advocacy, aid, and relief organization. Yazda was established to support the Yazidi, especially in northern Iraq, specifically Sinjar and Nineveh Plain, and northeastern Syria, where the Yazidi community has, as part of a deliberate "military, economic, and political strategy," been the focus of a genocidal campaign by ISIL that included mass murder, the separation of families, forced religious conversions, forced marriages, sexual assault, physical assault, torture, kidnapping, and slavery.
The Liberation of Christian and Yazidi Children of Iraq or CYCI foundation is a Canadian non-profit organization that aims to free Christian and Yazidi women captured and forced into sex slavery by ISIS.
Nareen Shammo is a Yazidi investigative journalist and a human rights defender.
Lamiya Haji Bashar is a Yazidi human rights activist. She was awarded the Sakharov Prize jointly with Nadia Murad in 2016.
Dalal Khario is a Yazidi woman from northern Iraq who fled to Germany after escaping from ISIS.
Aliyah Khalaf Saleh, also known as Umm Qusay, is an Iraqi humanitarian who helped over 50 individuals escape persecution by the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant in 2014. She is widely regarded as being a folk heroine in Iraq.
The Last Girl: My Story of Captivity, and My Fight Against the Islamic State is an autobiographical book by Nadia Murad in which she describes how she was captured and enslaved by the Islamic State during the Second Iraqi Civil War. The book eventually led to the 2018 Nobel Peace Prize being awarded to Murad.
The al-Hawl refugee camp is a refugee camp on the southern outskirts of the town of al-Hawl in northern Syria, close to the Syria-Iraq border, which holds individuals displaced from the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant. The camp is nominally controlled by the US-backed Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) but according to the U.S. Government, much of the camp is run by Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant who use the camp for indoctrination and recruitment purposes.
On Her Shoulders is a 2018 American documentary film. It was directed by Alexandria Bombach and produced by Hayley Pappas, Brock Williams and Elizabeth Schaeffer Brown under the banner of RYOT Films. The film follows Iraqi Yazidi human rights activist Nadia Murad on her three-month tour of Berlin, New York, and Canada, as she met with politicians and journalists to alert the world to the massacres and kidnapping happening in her native land. In 2014, at the age of 19, Murad had been kidnapped with hundreds of other women and girls by Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIS) and held as a sex slave; she managed to escape. Also appearing in the film are Barack Obama, Ban Ki-moon, Murad Ismael, Simone Monasebian, Michelle Rempel, Borys Wrzesnewskyj, Ahmed Khudida Burjus, Amal Clooney, and Luis Moreno Ocampo.
Nemam Ghafouri was an Iraqi-born Swedish Kurdish medical doctor and practitioner. She was known for helping Yazidi victims of Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL).
Germany (asylum)